Chicago, Alaa Aswany [first e reader .TXT] 📗

as if he were rocking a child while she screamed from sheer pleasure. The two seemed to be in an acute condition of arousal, as if they wanted to enjoy sex before the effect of the drug wore off or as if, somehow, inexplicably, they felt as if they were being observed and so they deliberately showed off their passion to the hilt. Jeff kept biting her breasts and licking them and sucking her nipples until she pushed him gently and he lay on his back. At that moment they seemed to be moving according to a well-established, mutually agreeable rhythm. She bent over him and reached out, undid his zipper, took out his organ and stared at it lustfully. She licked it several times then began to suck it delightedly. Ra’fat found himself rushing unaware toward the door. He rang the bell hard and nonstop. He pounded on the door and kicked it as hard as he could. A long interval passed, then he heard footsteps approaching. The outside light was turned on, then the door opened and Sarah appeared, having put on a silk robe over the nightgown. She looked at him with frightened eyes, as if in disbelief. She opened her mouth to say something, but he didn’t give her a chance: he slapped her hard on the face then kicked her in the belly. She screamed at the top of her voice as his own thundered while he stormed into the house, “You junkie whore! I’m going to kill you!”

CHAPTER 18

Shaymaa banged the tray down hard on the table. Some bits of Umm Ali scattered out of the plate. She looked at Tariq combatively and said, agitated, “How dare you permit yourself to touch me?”

His face turned completely pale and he mumbled in a soft voice, “I’m sorry.”

“Listen, Tariq, if you think I’m an easy girl, you are mistaken. If you misbehave again you will never see me again. Do you understand?”

He remained silent and bowed his head, as if he were a naughty child who had broken a very expensive vase. He took his leave and she followed him with a reprimanding look until he closed the door behind him. Her body kept shaking as she still felt his hand touching hers and his hot breath on her face. His sudden move had shocked her, so it had taken her a moment to figure out what had happened and to quickly move away from him, but that moment also sent her into new territory in which she had never been before, a secret area filled with delicious and titillating sensations that she had known only stealthily in her forbidden dreams. That immediately brought to her mind her mother’s warnings as if they were air raid sirens. She recalled the stern words she had heard a thousand times since her first monthly period took her by surprise during geography class in her first year in preparatory school: “Men, Shaymaa, only want a woman’s body. They would do anything to get it. They seduce girls with sweet talk, selling them the illusion of love until they have their way with them. Your body is your honor, Shaymaa, and your father’s honor. Your body is the whole family’s dignity. If you are lax with it we will spend the rest of our lives humiliated, in shame. Your body is a trust that God Almighty has placed in your hands to preserve, sound and pure, until you hand it over to the man who marries you in accordance with God’s commandments and the Prophet’s way. Know, Shaymaa, that a man never marries a woman who yields any part of her body to him. A man has no respect for an easy woman and he can never trust her with his honor and his children.”

After Shaymaa recalled these principles she had grown up with, she felt content that she had stopped Tariq in his tracks. After a while she thought more calmly: even though he had made a monstrous mistake by trying to embrace her, he, on the other hand, has declared his love for her, which meant that he respected her and wanted to marry her.

She sat down to study, determined to give it her all. She said to herself, Our love should give us an added impetus to work hard and get the degree, so we can go back to Egypt and marry. When she finished studying, she went to the bathroom, where she performed her ablution. She performed the obligatory night prayer and the recommended extra prayers. Then she turned off the light and went to bed in the dark. She kept staring at the dark and then something happened that surprised her: she recalled what Tariq had done and did not disapprove of it and was not angry with him for it. To the contrary, she was swept by an overpowering affection for him. He was in love with her and wanted to embrace her as all lovers did. That was all. Could she have exaggerated her anger? Once again her mother’s harsh warnings came back to her mind, but for the first time in her life, she found herself rethinking them.

If what her mother was saying was true, then a girl who was lax with her body, even just a little bit, could never marry. But she knew many stories proving the opposite of that. She knew girls who had given men liberally of their bodies and yet ended up with excellent marriages. Her friend Radwa, instructor in the pathology department in Tanta Medical School, became her professor’s mistress, and their illicit relationship was the talk of the whole school for a long time. In the end the professor divorced his wife, the mother of his children, and married Radwa and had children with her. What about her neighbor in Tanta, Lubna? Did she not go out with several young men and tell her in